North Island Champsionships

This weekend I was up at Lake Karapiro, home of NZ rowing. Many NZ regattas are held here and next year the world rowing championships will be held here... I just signed up for their volunteer pool, anyone else want to?

It was our first time rowing with buoys (which happens to be a homonym in Kiwi English the word boys, leading my teenage teammates to distinguish between 'penis boys' and 'water buoys' just to make sure everyone is on the same page. I think the fact that their voices tend to become more high pitched whenever boys are talked about makes it perfectly cleared, but hey I guess extra information isn't too dangerous in this case!)
We also frequently walked by the high performance center:

Complete with tree storage and a shipping container that I assume is to transport boats to overseas events:

The attached toilets had open plumbing that allowed you to see the water flowing from the sink, around the room, and down the drain.

Have I mentioned that I love how nonpretentious sports are here. And really, they still are churning out Olympic rowers so who says things need to be flash to make it work!?
And it was pretty cool to see Mahi Drysdale walking around with his sports bag getting ready for races that were happening as we were rowing up for our own races.

We also had a bit of time to just chill out by the water.


Then the long drive home through the desert road at dusk. It is so lovely at that time of night.

looking east
looking west


looking straight on down the road toward home